A Wren Says

You know how people love that “new car smell.” It’s so beloved that it has been captured and interpreted into a scent you could hang from the rearview of your twenty-year older beater. Truth be told, that smell is just a combination of various chemicals used in manufacturing the cars. We have come to associate it with freshness, luxury, and freedom of a brand new car. We have come to expect a certain scent in cars, and the way a car smells can ultimately affect whether or not we choose to purchase it.

Enter the role of the smellmaster.

Nissan has smell experts who evaluate the scents of the cars they manufacture. They put the cars in different environmental conditions, sniff their way across the dashboard, and bounce around to all the seats in the car. All of it to make sure that the customer’s nose gets the best experience.

While they have one person setting the global standard, Nissan recognizes that scent preferences differ by culture. That means there are multiple scentmasters, testing the cars for their local markets. The next time you walk on to the lot of a car dealership, slip into a new model for a test drive. Take a moment to deeply inhale. Think about what you smell and all the work to create that “new car smell.”